Depression: High Risk For Heart Patients

Posted by Christina Crease

at October 1, 2008

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According to a new report by the American Heart Association, heart disease patients must be monitored and treated for as it can severely affect their health and quality of life. The suggestion could affect majority of people and heart disease is the main reason of death in the United States with more than 80 million people suffering some sort of it.

“The necessary message is to analyze people and provide them treatment,” said Erika Froelicher, a professor at the UCSF School of Nursing and Medicine. In the report, researchers evaluated several studies and discovered that depression is three times more common among people who are having heart attack as compared to the normal population. In addition to it, young women emerged to have greater risk of depression after heart attack.

Moreover, the American Heart Association said that people who were in the hospital for the treatment of such situations as unbalance angina, angioplasty, bypass surgery or valve surgery went through depression at rates parallel to those who had an absolute heart attack. Froelicher said that cardiac patients must be asked two main questions: “Have you at any time felt slight curiosity or delight in doing something?” and “Are you feeling low, upset or hopeless?”

If answers of these questions are positively replied then they must be accessed again. The screening should be regularly followed in these medical settings as hospitals, rehabilitation centers and doctors’ offices. Treatment could be medication, exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy.

In first place, depression can occur the heart attack, Froelicher said. “Depressed people might not exercise or eat properly or they might smoke,” she said. South Bay heart patient Robert Lacey quotes he understood in perception that he would go through a few kind of depression following quadruple bypass surgery around 18 years ago. Recommended to take it simple for three months, he said he would plan to do several projects at his home shop.

“But everything I touched changed into waste,” said Lacey, now 70, a retired machinist living in Los Gatos. “I could not focus. For a little period, till I finished it, my mind just was not place correctly. Some days I did not wish to get out of bed.”

As coordinator of a Mended Hearts Inc. chapter, which provides help to heart patients, Lacey sees patients on weekly basis at various hospitals. If he feels that they might be having depression, he awares their doctor or spouse.

“I try my best to take the negativity out of what is going on,” he said. “The reality is we get a reprieve every single day.”

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